David asked to crowdsource policies for the upcoming election, so China, Subs, RAAF, F-35s and more below…

Defence Policy

by David Archibald

The world is becoming more dangerous as US predominance recedes. A revanchist Russia is not expected to trouble Australia. The biggest near term threat is Chinese aggression in East Asia. Chinese attempts to expand its territory are quite likely to lead to war with a number of southeast Asian states, Japan and the United States. Australia will become involved because of our treaties with Japan and the United States. The worst outcome is that China wins a conflict in East Asia and dictates terms to Australia and other countries. A war in East Asia, whatever the outcome, is likely to result in countries acquiring nuclear weapons to counter aggressive hegemons like China.

David Archibald points at a very interesting paper that suggests that children conceived during solar activity peaks were less likely to survive and had a whopping 5 year deduction from their lifespan. But don’t panic if you were a peak baby, the affected people were born to poorer women in Scandinavia in the 18th and 19th century. Mortality was 8% in the first year. One in twelve babies didn’t make it. Things were different then. Richer women were somehow able to compensate, or repair the damage. The authors seem fairly sure it has something to do with UV, but I’m not convinced. Solar effects include magnetic effects, solar wind, neutron bombardment, and cosmic rays. There are plenty of things to choose from. Lots more papers to come on this.

Marvel that the sun might influence our lifespan and fertility, but not “do much” to the climate. ;- )

There is much to discuss in comments — many of us wondered if there is a dietary connection, but this effect does not seem to be due to famine, or less food (wheat was cheaper at solar maxes).

While some global whiners are predicting death, disease and reckless fish, an ominous array of other forces are gathering. The time of plenty, peace and abundance could be coming to an end. I’ve finally had a chance to look at David Archibald’s hot new book, and it’s a book that needs to be discussed. It’s the debate we ought to be having. (I’ll be referring to it again on this blog).

In the West we have rarely had it so good: since World War II things have been relatively peaceful; the sun reached a once-in-8000-year global maximum, keeping us warm; the big easy oil fields were tapped, gifting us the cheapest energy in human history; and the most obvious gains in agriculture meant food supply increased even faster than populations grew. David Archibald paints a provocative argument of a world where a cooling sun means grain supply can’t keep pace with demand, oil production starts to slide and forces of unrest in the mid East collapse to chaos while those in the far East rise ascendant.

David Archibald writes:

Who are those four horsemen? A severe, solar-driven cooling is one. Over the next twenty to thirty years, we are [...]

David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.

Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts a 2.1°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”

He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.

I don’t have a horse in the Peak Oil race, but Energy Security is too important to let the government “disappear” inconvenient reports. As David Archibald points out, at one time the Australian Government went to great lengths to make sure we would be more self sufficient. Lately there are times when Australia doesn’t even have three months supply.– Jo

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Guest Post by David Archibald

Inconvenient report disappeared

About a week ago, the Australian Government released what it called a “Draft Energy White Paper”. It is available here: http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/facts/white_paper/draft-ewp-2011/Pages/Draft-Energy-White-Paper-2011.aspx

World Annual Discovery (red) and Production of Oil (Blue) See below for details.

The White Paper contains a number of strange statements and inanities:

Page 67: “For a major global energy exporter like Australia, pursuing a goal of national energy self‐sufficiency is counterintuitive.”

Page 69: “Energy security does not equate to energy independence or self‐sufficiency in any particular energy source.”

Page 123: “As a result of increased daily net imports in recent years, the level of oil stocks in Australia has regularly fallen below the 90‐day requirement since mid‐2010. The National Energy Security Assessment found that this does not [...]

We can thank the global warmers for one thing. Their claim that the sky is falling got people like me to investigate. What I found was that global warming is exactly wrong. Instead of warming, our planet is cooling as solar activity weakens.

The heating effect of carbon dioxide is minuscule. It is lost in the noise of the climate system. That is why the temperature of the planet today is exactly the same as it was thirty years ago. On top of all that, the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere is dangerously low. All living things would be better off if we had more of it in the atmosphere.

You have not been told that before because the global warmers have corrupted all the institutions that are meant to serve us. The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the universities, have all sold their souls, and sold the Australian People down the river. Those institutions we once respected are now venal and not to be trusted.

Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians. If they believe in global warming, they are easily deluded fools.

Sometimes there’s just no point. Do they think ad hominem is a spice in an Arabic dip? What can you say? Just smile and go back to doing your damnedest to work for free so that they and their children might have a bit more freedom from tyranny and a bit more of their hard earned cash in their wallet. If you succeed, they’ll probably never thank you, but it’s still a job worth doing. Cheers!

Anthony Watts, and David Archibald will be speaking in Melbourne Tuesday night. Don’t miss your last chance to see the heroes of the grassroots independent scientists. Read my thoughts on Anthony and David. Get more info from the Climate Sceptics.

David will be speaking with the Anthony Watts Tour in Australia. I’ll be buying a copy of his book.

June 1, 2010

This is a shorter version of the Quadrant Online extract.

Edited extract: “Why did so many scientists get it wrong?” from David Archibald’s book – The Past and Future of Climate:

If the data and forecasts in this book are correct, then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO in Australia are all wrong. How can this be? Firstly, there aren’t that many scientists involved in the IPCC deliberations. The inner core is possibly twenty souls. Secondly, they were untroubled by the necessity to concoct fraudulent data to get their desired results. The only unknown question regarding the IPCC scientists is “Did they actually believe in the global warming that they were promoting?”

It turns out that they did, and possibly still do. That is shown by the Climategate emails released on 20th November, 2009. The Climategate emails are a selection of emails amongst members of [...]

In years to come history books will be written about the grassroots scientists with next to no resources except their wits, who blew the whistle on the biggest scientific scandal of the century and changed the course of billions of dollars, and thousands of careers. Anthony Watts is one of those key men. We’ve hit the jackpot here in Australia: we’ve got a chance to hear him speak. His site Watts Up With That gets a whopping 3 million hits a month.

Anthony Watts is a TV weatherman and meteorologist. He started a volunteer movement with over 650 people who’ve inspected and reported on over 1000 of the surface stations in the US Historical climate network (USHCN). This is a network managed by NOAA with a four billion dollar annual budget. The volunteers achieved what big bureaucracy couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

The grave state of the USHCN was exposed with photograph after photograph. The network has impeccable standards on paper, but only manages to meet them 11% of the time.